$1 Trillion Pentagon Budget Cut Is Possible but Not Wise: View

Before the body of the congressional
budget supercommittee was even cold, we heard outcries over the
Pentagon budget cuts mandated by its demise.

“I will not be the Armed Services Committee chairman who
presides over the crippling of our military,” vowed Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, a California Republican, on Tuesday.

None of us wants him to be. The supercommittee failure will
mean some $500 billion to $600 billion in military cuts over the
next decade, on top of $450 billion the Pentagon has already
agreed to. In addition, the budget-cutting mechanism called for
by the law is seriously flawed when it comes to military
spending, demanding an even cut across all programs, rather than
allowing the Pentagon discretion. Fortunately, Congress is
unlikely to allow things to play out that way, and in the next
13 months legislators will argue over a way to let the Pentagon
out of the straitjacket.

That does not, and should not, mean that the military won’t
play a serious role in the effort to bring the nation’s finances
under control. Although we agree that reducing projected
spending by $1 trillion over the decade is very worrisome, we
feel that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta overstated the
matter in calling it a “doomsday” scenario that “invites
aggression.”

What would $1 trillion in cuts look like? Several folks --
the Congressional Budget Office, the Simpson-Bowles commission
and Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, in his “Back in
Black” deficit reduction plan -- have suggested cuts to
programs that would get the Pentagon under the wire. This
potpourri of proposals has been collated and tallied by Robert Levinson, an analyst with our sister operation Bloomberg
Government, who came up with following menu of potential savings
that totals $1.2 trillion over fiscal 2013 to 2021. Choose
wisely:

-- Curtail small purchases such as ammunition and computers
across the board. ($212 billion)

How practical is this list? Some measures are fairly
obvious: The problem-plagued Osprey can be replaced by MH-60
helicopters; our high-quality current generation of F-16 and F-
18 jet fighters makes Lockheed-Martin Corp.’s (LMT) F-35 an
unnecessary luxury; the vertical-takeoff drone is a lemon;
medical benefits for retirees are overgenerous compared with the
private sector; U.S.-based military children can attend local
public schools. (There are also programs not part of the budget
discussion that deserve scrutiny, such as the Ford Class
supercarrier and continued purchases of M1 Abrams tanks.)

Other cuts make sense when viewed in context. The tuition-
assistance program sounds good, but is inferior to the newest
G.I. Bill benefits available to troops. (The Veterans’
Administration picks up that tab.)

But mostly these are tough calls. The Littoral Combat Ship
is very vulnerable to attack, but could be an important vessel
for military and humanitarian missions in the Indian and Pacific
oceans, where China has been increasingly projecting its power.
Limits to pay raises could harm recruitment. And, of course,
cutting the size of the Marine Corps and Army would be very
difficult to sell politically, and can be rejected out of hand
by the president.

The bigger point, as we have argued before, is that making
the size of the Pentagon’s budget dependent on factors that have
nothing to do with national security is an odd way to go about
things. As Congress, inevitably, plans its end run around the
automatic cuts, it should consider the list above not based on
dollar signs but on what we really, truly need to keep the
nation secure. If that doesn’t add up to $1 trillion in cuts,
lawmakers should look elsewhere for increased savings and
revenue.